The Grass Could be Greener
by ReidsFanGirl18
Summary: Some say there's no such thing as interagency cooperation, but the higher ups have found a way to fix it. For the next 14 weeks, one agent from Gibb's team, and one agent from the BAU will switch places for two weeks, one pair at a time until everyone has had their chance to see if the grass is really greener on the other side (Rated T for mild language and unsub violence)
1. Preface

The Grass Could be Greener

Preface:

Switch

_Rossi: "You will come to know that what appears today to be a sacrifice, will prove instead to be the greatest investment you will ever make." – Gordon B. Hinckley _

It was a Saturday night at the BAU, Hotch had called them all, but told them that they wouldn't need their go-bags. This was a meeting Recall, not a case. The room was quiet, the whole office was still, no one was there this late on a Saturday unless they were ordered to be, which the BAU had been. Everyone wondered what was so immediate that it required Hotch to call everyone back in from an all too infrequent weekend off, just for a meeting. The feeling of apprehension and excitement was only heightened by the fact that the only times this had ever happened before, had heralded either the departure of one team member, or the adding of a new one. They were all gathered around the round table in the conference room, but Hotch had yet to join them. They each shot questioning looks at each other, each wondering if any of the others knew what this was about, but each of them was just as confused as the others. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, Hotch came in.

"Good Evening Sir, what's going on?" Garcia asked apprehensively.

Hotch's only direct reply was an: _I'll explain in a moment _Look.

"Thank you all for coming. The Joint Chiefs have made the decision to create a program in which two teams from different agencies will swap agents for two weeks at a time. We have been chosen and ordered to participate. Beginning Monday, one of us will report to NCIS's DC field team, and one of them will be here with us. They've told me that they've tried to minimize disruption by matching the agents they switch at the same time in terms of skill set and personality. Reid, you'll be first… Starting Monday you will report to SSA Gibbs at NCIS." Hotch explained.

"Gibbs…?" Rossi asked in surprise. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs?"

"Yes?" Hotch answered questioningly.

"You know him or something Rossi?" Morgan asked.

"Um yeah… he's a marine… I was actually his Commanding Officer in basic training… hard to imagine the skinny little wise ass I used to know as a Unit Chief at the head of a team of federal agents… but I actually haven't seen him in twenty three years… He's a good guy, smart, no nonsense…no real patience for bureaucracy or politics, but he can sniff out bad guys faster than a bloodhound…last I heard he was injured and spent nine days in a coma…he woke up after he'd already rotated home and that was the last I ever saw of him."

"Sir do we really have to do this?" Garcia asked.

"Garcia this goes higher than the director, we don't have a choice."

Meanwhile at NCIS…

Gibbs, Tony, Ziva, Kate, Abby, Ducky, and Palmer were having a discussion of their own, about what the next few months would be like.

"When was this decided?" Ducky asked.

"Apparently they've been sitting on this for a while, figuring out how it's all gonna work and which teams they were going to match with which. Now that they've made their decision, it's happening."

"What do you mean they're going to switch us?" Tony exclaimed, at the end of a similar meeting facilitated by Gibbs.

"Wait, so who is switching whom?" Ziva asked, not quite grasping what was going on.

"For the next two weeks, one of us will join the behavioral analysis unit, and one of their agents will take that person's place on this team."

"But that's ridiculous…" Ziva replied.

Gibbs nodded in agreement. "And above my pay grade, Vance's too. We don't have a choice. It's about building interagency relationships and cooperation. Higher Ups seem to think we'll all work better if we learn from each other and learn to cooperate. The first switch started on Monday…" he replied frustrated.

"Who's going first? Abby asked.

"McGee, on Monday you report to SSA Hotchner…" He said, answering Abby's question and giving McGee his marching orders at the same time.

Abby hugged McGee possessively in response, resting her chin on his shoulder. She gave Gibbs a _please don't make him go_ look.

"Not my choice Abby…" Gibbs replied.

"It's just for two weeks though right?" Abby asked.

"Unless the current case on either team when the two weeks is up lasts longer than that." Gibbs explained. "If the case takes longer then they stay in their current positions until that case closes, then they go home and bring the next switch pair back with them." Gibbs answered.

"So that's it?" Tony asked, half expecting yet another rug to be torn right out from under them.

"That's how it works… now go home. Get some sleep… McGee, see you in two weeks, hopefully, the rest of you, I want you in by six-fifteen on Monday…" Gibbs ordered, and the meeting dispersed.


	2. Chapter 1: Nerd Fish Part 1

Section 1: Reid/McGee

Chapter 1: Nerd-Fish Out of Water Part 1

On Sunday night, the day before Reid would start his new temporary assignment, he sat in his apartment wondering what it would be like. He hadn't spoken up in the meeting, but he knew a few members of the NCIS field team already. Tim McGee, who Reid had found out yesterday would be taking his place at the BAU, was his cousin, but was in many ways more like a big brother. Tony DiNozzo was an old friend of his and Tim's since the three of them were in high school together. Actually, Tony had been the only upperclassman aside from Tim who _hadn't _beaten him up on an almost daily basis and taken great pleasure in doing it. Agent Kate Todd, had been FBI originally, and Reid had trained with her quite a bit back in the Academy, so really, he had known her longer than anyone on her own team. Ducky, the NCIS medical examiner, was an old friend to the entirety of his mother's side of the family, being very close to Spencer's grandmother, and a friend, mentor, and in many ways a surrogate grandfather to all five of her grandchildren. But the rest of them, Gibbs, Ziva, Abby? He'd only heard stories from Tim over the years. Of course it could be worse, after all, Tim didn't know any of the rest of the BAU… _Morgan's going to have a field day with this…and who knows how Garcia's going to react? _Reid thought, remembering how Garcia had behaved toward Blake when she'd first joined the team. Maybe he should warn him… no… the others wouldn't have that advantage, and besides, Tim had proven over and over again that he could handle it.

Meanwhile, in the same building, but on the floor below, Tim was typing away at his typewriter, trying to imagine what the rest of the BAU was like, Spencer had described them over the years, but McGee had never actually met any of them. He tried to picture them in his head the same way he did the characters in his books, but he couldn't, he only had their names and rough schemes of personalities to go off of, information gathered from ten years of anecdotal stories, and no faces to put to any of it.

He sighed, the fact was that they were both about to be the new guy again, like fish thrown in a new pond, and those types of situations had very rarely gone very well for either of them.

The next morning, it was a bright clear morning out as the sun was rising, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but even that, could do nothing to offset Reid's nervousness. it took all of his self-control not to get on his usual train, which stopped only about a block from FBI headquarters, out of sheer habit, and get on a train to the navy yard instead. It felt strange, almost wrong, and he missed his team already, he missed Morgan, and Garcia, and JJ, and Rossi, and even Hotch. The closer he got to his destination, the more he just wanted to go back to the FBI.

He arrived just as Tony was pulling in. Tony smiled broadly as he got out of the car.

"No way…no freaking way… we got you for the next two weeks?" He asked.

"Looks that way…"

"Awesome!" Tony replied excitedly.

That made Reid smile, maybe he'd been worried for nothing.

"I have no idea where we're going."

"Third floor squad room. Gibbs is waiting for us. Ziva's probably already up there too, but I don't see her car yet, two things to know about Ziva, don't make her angry, don't let her drive."

"Don't let her drive?" Reid asked in surprise.

"Yeah don't… the running theory is that she was an East European cab driver in a past life, McGee threw up the first time we rode with Ziva driving. As for not making her angry, she's ex-Mossad, she carries three guns and a knife and doesn't need any of them to kill you."

"Yeesh…"

"She's actually pretty nice though…" Tony clarified, realizing that he wasn't exactly being very helpful. "Once you get on her good side it's pretty hard to do any worse than just annoying her. Abby on the other hand, our resident forensic scientist and the happiest Goth you'll ever meet, but she and McGee are tight so if she doesn't seem to like you at first, don't take it personally, because it's not."

"Don't make Ziva angry, don't take any standoffishness from Abby personally, got it." Reid replied.

"Good, now let's go, Gibbs hates it when we're late, even if nothing's going on yet…" Tony said, leading Reid to the elevator that would take them to the third floor.

The NCIS squad room was a large, open area with a bull pen in the middle, with orange walls and gray carpet. Inside the bull pen, there were five desks arranged in two parallel rows, three to Reid's right, and two to his left.

He looked at the set up intently, trying to decide from the items on and around each desk, which one was most likely Tim's, and by extension, his for the next two weeks.

"That's me, right here on the end on the right hand side, McGee's is the one next to me…" Tony said, having stood there, watching him try to decipher where to go for the last thirty seconds.

At Tony's words, Reid took his place at his correct desk.

"Who sits there?" He asked, nodding toward the desk across from Tony.

"That's Ziva's, then Gibbs, next to her, right in the middle of everyone. Kate's over on the other side of you." He explained.

"So where is everybody?" Reid asked.

"Well, my guess is that Gibbs is talking to the director, Kate's probably in Abby's lab, and Ziva' might actually just not be here yet, it was her turn to make the coffee run…"

"Huh?"

"I don't know about you guys, but usually we start out the day with the good stuff, you know, what we actually like verses what we have in the break room, one of us per day goes and gets it on their way here, I wish we'd known it was you because then I would've just asked. I told Ziva to just bring McGee's usual order, plain double-shot espresso heavy on the sugar…"

"Actually that's exactly what I would've asked for…"

That's when a short, red-headed woman came out of a different elevator on the other side of the room.

"Good morning…" She said.

"Morning Kate." They replied.

Kate stopped short at their words.

"Wait a second…I know that voice… Reid?"

"Yep!" Reid replied, grinning broadly.

"Oh my gosh, how long has it been?" she asked.

"Since the last time we hung out? Seven years, nine months and twenty-two days…" He answered.

"Some things never change do they?" Kate asked.

"Not really…"

"Well it's good to see you…" She said, sitting down at her own desk.

"You too."

Then another woman, one Reid didn't recognize, came in from the same elevator he and Tony and used. She had long, wavy, black hair, dark brown eyes and an olive skin tone, and she was carrying a cardboard tray with five cups of coffee, he realized at once that this must be Ziva.

"Good morning…" She said.

"Morning Ziva." Tony and Kate replied in unison.

Reid sat there, searching for a way to introduce himself, without babbling on as he sometimes did with people unfamiliar to him.

This time it was Kate, who helped him out.

"Ziva, this is Spencer Reid, he's the one who will be taking McGee's place for the next two weeks." She said.

To Reid's surprise, Ziva smiled kindly at him and immediately picked up the cup of espresso that Tony had ordered for him and set it on his desk.

"Hi, I'm Ziva David, it is nice to meet you…"

"You too…" he replied, trying to make sense of her behavior. Clearly Ziva was warmer and friendlier than Tony had made her out to be. Still, something about her gave him the impression that her bad side was not a pleasant place to be.

"Morning…" called out an older man, with gray hair and stern, impenetrable blue eyes.

_That must be Agent Gibbs… _Reid realized.

Gibbs stopped right in front of his desk.

"So, the FBI sent me a pipe cleaner with eyes, huh?" He asked, but the question sounded almost rhetorical, Gibbs was staring him down, sizing him up. For a moment, Reid sat there looking, and feeling, intimidated and absolutely terrified, despite himself, desperately wishing he was back at the BAU where he belonged.

Suddenly Gibbs softened, the hard, frowning stare giving way to an amused expression and a wide grin.

"Relax, I'm just messing with you kid, welcome aboard…" Gibbs replied, then he took a seat at his own desk next to Ziva.

To Be Continued…


	3. Chapter 2: Nerd Fish Part 2

Chapter 2: Nerd-fish Out of Water Part 2

That Same Morning at NCIS…

McGee pulled into the parking lot at FBI headquarters and walked in and went through security, then, after wandering around for a while, trying to figure out where he was supposed to go, he asked them where he was supposed to go, and they directed him toward an elevator off to his left and told him to go to the fifth floor. The walls around him were a bluish-gray, cold, detached, professional, not the warm, welcoming orange of NCIS. Up until now he had actually disliked the walls on the third floor of NCIS, his whole team had even suggested, when the building had been blown up and they had to redo a lot of it, that it change. It had been the director who had vetoed that idea. Now though, he was sure that after this experience, he would never even think a complaint about the orange walls again. On the ride up the elevator, he tried to compose himself. He didn't want to walk in there looking or sounding sacred, because if he gave into the fear he'd start stuttering like an idiot.

_Please…please don't let anything else go wrong today… _He thought to himself. Then he heard the small _Ding _of the elevator, signaling that he had reached the floor he'd requested. He got out, and headed for the glass doors that led into the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The glass doors were locked tight, so he slid his ID badge through the key-reader, but it lit up bright red, and the screen read out "Access Denied".

"Oh come on!" He railed. He calmed himself down and tried it again. It didn't work. He had been told that his NCIS ID should work, temporarily authorized for the next two weeks. So why wasn't it working?

"Come on door… open… please…? I'm going to be late if you don't let me in…" he said, tugging right on the door handles.

"Is there a problem?" Came a familiar melodic voice. That's when he saw her, he knew it was her, he just couldn't believe it.

"Penelope?!" he exclaimed in surprise.

"Tim? Is that you?" Garcia asked.

"Black Queen?" he asked tentatively.

"Elf Lord?" She responded, in a mixture of elation and surprise.

"Yeah…yeah it's me…"

"Tim… oh my God, how long has it been since I've seen you outside of cyber space?" Garcia asked.

"About eight years, since we figured out that we were living in the same city and decided to meet for coffee and a sandwich at that little 24-hour diner after we both got off at one in the morning…"

"That feels like forever-ago…" she replied.

"I know…"

"Wait, so you're the agent from NCIS who's going to be here for the next two weeks?" she asked.

"Well yes, but only if I can get through this door… the lock won't accept my ID for some reason…"

"Oh that's my fault, I haven't gotten the temporary authorization done yet… sorry about that…I'll do that right now…"

"Thank you…"

"You're welcome… thank you for being the new person, saves me the time of running an unauthorized deep background check…" She told him as she typed away at her tablet screen.

"Excuse me?"

"What? I'm not just gonna let some strange new person travel with my family and not find out who they are…" She replied. "You're in…"

"Thank you…" he said gratefully.

"It was my pleasure Elf Lord…" She told him, holding the door open.

But he didn't go through.

"Oh no… ladies first my queen…" He replied, holding it open for her.

"Always the gentleman…" She replied, as they both headed in.

The BAU looked surprisingly similar to the NCIS office, just, larger and busier, which made sense. NCIS had one field team per major city, the BAU was a specialized unit that only worked out of Quantico, they had several teams working out of this place, and in terms of field agents their teams were slightly larger too.

Again McGee was faced with the dilemma of not knowing where to go. He couldn't wander around like a creeper, looking at everyone's work area until he found the right one, but he couldn't just pick at random and take a seat either, he felt like a complete idiot.

"Tim…" Penelope said, breaking into his private thoughts and dragging him back to the here and now. "You're over there…" She told him, pointing toward Reid's desk.

"Ah… there we go… thank you…you just saved my hide a second time…"

"That's kind of my job around here… unlike you, I'm still a technical analyst. I also handle resources… You should meet the rest of the team. Morgan, Rossi, and Hotch, our unit chief, are all in their offices upstairs…"

"You guys have separate offices?" McGee asked in surprise.

"Some of us do… Rossi just kind of has one, Hotch has one because he's our unit chief, and Morgan has one because he took over for Hotch, temporarily at one point…why? You guys don't at NCIS? Not even you're unit chief?"

"No…no Gibbs is down in the bull pen with the rest of us, he prefers it that way. Says it works better if we're all in the same room."

"Huh… well I'll go tell Hotch you're here ok?" she asked, as if sensing his apprehension.

"Ok… see you later…"

Garcia headed up the stairs to Hotch's office where she found him finishing up the reports from the previous case.

She poked her head in and knocked twice on the inside of the door.

"Come in…" he said.

"Good morning Sir." She replied.

"Good morning Garcia."

"Sir, the agent is here from NCIS… I know you said that you wanted to introduce everyone before we did the profile briefing…"

"Thank you…go tell Rossi and Morgan and I'll find Blake and JJ…"

"Yes Sir…"

Morgan and Rossi were in Morgan's office, talking about the whole situation.

"I don't like it Rossi…I just don't like it…"

"Look, nobody likes a group shake-up, but you heard Hotch. It's not our decision to make, and the best thing we can do right now, is accept this agent, play along with what the brass wants, and not make him feel like our frustrations about the whole thing are his fault." Rossi replied.

"I mean seriously, what do we even know about this guy?"

"I know that the Unit Chief he's used to work with, doesn't take crap from anyone, especially his subordinates… I know that he doesn't have the patience to put up with mediocrity and that he would make sure it was ingrained in them. NCIS and FBI handle things differently, and we handle things a little differently than ordinary agents because we're profilers, but we're getting a decent agent. I don't doubt that for a second, and he deserves for all of us to give him a chance."

That's when Garcia popped in and told them that Hotch wanted everyone down in the bull pen.

Tim watched as the rest of the BAU approached, trying, to notice details that allowed him to match faces to the names he'd heard from his cousin's anecdotes over the years.

There was a short blond woman with pretty blue eyes and a kind expression. _That must be JJ… _he thought. _Tall guy with black hair, professional vibe, little to no indication of a sense of humor…so that's Hotch… Let's see, strong-looking, bald, African American, that's gotta be Morgan… which means the older guy has to be Rossi, and the brunette must be Blake… _

"Agent McGee…" Hotch called out, drawing him out of his own private thoughts.

"Yes sir?" He responded out of habit.

"I'm Agent Hotchner, your new unit chief, call me Hotch. These are your teammates for the next two weeks, JJ, Morgan, Rossi, Blake, and our technical analyst Penelope Garcia… Welcome to the BAU.


End file.
